Eco, I love your games. Let me know when you run another one, or if you'd be willing to let me co-mod. There's probably more I got... if anyone threatens my award, I will redouble my efforts.
Gg all
Felt pretty good about staying in the middle all game. Being just townie enough to avoid too much heat and pushing a bunch of town.
Really thought outing my identity would lead to my lynch tbh.
Didn't expect the quick thunder dome in lylo. Wasn't sure we could recover from that. Great job with that claim, joeterry
Tubba I think you played great. Can't wait to see you be town.
Lngrrr: sorry. But it worked out in the end.
@jey I sort of expect you to feel that way about me regardless of my alignment. You and kj should hang out
@rodemy lord was I trying hard to lynch you there. Idk if I would have made it (gut says jey was gonna vote you but idk) but that was as much as I could put into it and it was brutal
@shadow I really wanted to kill you but there was never a good time. New you weren't gonna be on my side.
@pizza
I think scum have won every game we've been in together. Regardless of our alignments. We should maybe work on that.
I don't think it would be like that all of the time. I followed you just fine in Apocalypse, and reading this game it felt way different but you had your gimmick to hand-wave that excuse away. I definitely suspected your play but I'm terrible at this game. I'm right, and then I doubt myself and my ability to comprehend anything.
I really did want to vote Rodemy though, that's one of the things I was definitely wrong about.
I forgot why I quit the first time though and honestly it's going to cascade through this game. I was right and nobody listened to me, and I'm not about to have it a third time. Maybe I'll be around as another co-mod though!
To anyone: writing is a huge passion of mine and if you want some help with flavor for a game give me or Iso a ring (he's my roommate).
I have to say that Rodemy's LyLo play was excellent, which is part of the reason I redirected to JeyK. I didn't think I was going to be able to pretend not to believe his town pleas much longer. I also didn't want to have to Lynch all three of my scum partners. I wanted to Lynch Tubba, but pizza beat me too it.
Yeah, I kinda had the problem I always seem to have as scum... feel way too self-cautious and be scared to throw myself out there. I figured I was done for, and better to just clam up.
I don't think it would be like that all of the time. I followed you just fine in Apocalypse, and reading this game it felt way different but you had your gimmick to hand-wave that excuse away. I definitely suspected your play but I'm terrible at this game. I'm right, and then I doubt myself and my ability to comprehend anything.
I really did want to vote Rodemy though, that's one of the things I was definitely wrong about.
I forgot why I quit the first time though and honestly it's going to cascade through this game. I was right and nobody listened to me, and I'm not about to have it a third time. Maybe I'll be around as another co-mod though!
To anyone: writing is a huge passion of mine and if you want some help with flavor for a game give me or Iso a ring (he's my roommate).
Actually, I DO have a completed (&reviewed) basic that needs flavor. I'm just scared to run it since its my first game as mod.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
Eco, I love your games. Let me know when you run another one, or if you'd be willing to let me co-mod.
Thanks for the kind words. If/when I run another game I'll hit you up. I don't have anything in the pipeline at the moment, apart from some half-baked Specialty ideas that are pretty far out there.
Actually, I DO have a completed (&reviewed) basic that needs flavor. I'm just scared to run it since its my first game as mod.
I might consider taking you up on this.
Do it. Do it now! Running games isn't that scary, and the vote counter means you don't even need a giant spreadsheet any more. More importantly, we need more games!
+++++++++
@All: Thoughts on the setup and it's creation, along with the play of the game itself to come tomorrow.
Thanks for an awesome game Eco, absolutely loved the flavor!
Sorry to the town for not being able to play any better, I don't really know what happened but at some point I just lost track of everything and couldn't really put it back together.
PA tennis' backstory was he was an awesome mafia player back in college and had to quit when he got a real job. Probably something in the financial sector because hes that sort of dude. Someone told him about this site that has 2 week phases and he gave it a shot. He's a bit meaner than me, which was exacerbated by being scum.
He was gonna play 2-3 games and fade away like Not_A_Gimmick.
Playstyle would have been fun as town.
Official beverage of Pa Tennis was orange exuberance yerba mate. He also smoked menthols.
Thanks for an awesome game Eco, absolutely loved the flavor!
Sorry to the town for not being able to play any better, I don't really know what happened but at some point I just lost track of everything and couldn't really put it back together.
I mean, this was a darn good town game for you, and your effort really did show.
PA tennis' backstory was he was an awesome mafia player back in college and had to quit when he got a real job. Probably something in the financial sector because hes that sort of dude. Someone told him about this site that has 2 week phases and he gave it a shot. He's a bit meaner than me, which was exacerbated by being scum.
He was gonna play 2-3 games and fade away like Not_A_Gimmick.
Playstyle would have been fun as town.
Official beverage of Pa Tennis was orange exuberance yerba mate. He also smoked menthols.
While we're on the subject of revealing things, my breadcrumb was totally real, this was my first (non micro) game as true vanilla town. Also this marks 3 games in a row when someone else gave me something; tom in horsemen, AG in Silence, and Rhand here. Eco told me that I must have a trustable friendly wolf face.
I sent this to Eco just before sunrise on the night I died.
I was going to open the next day with this, which, by the way, was the extremely condensed version. I had a much much much longer one spanning six posts, because it cannot fit in one post.
So overnight I had a look into Papa Tom, and it's not even a close contest. This player has not even been trying to play it as pro-townie.
There are several approaches to scum theory, and one approach would be to disguise your intentions as much as possible while still getting the job done, looking as much like your own town game as possible. If you have to do something outright scummy, you have to try to mask it in pro-town intentions and reasons.
Tom's not doing any of that. Instead he is going for maximum townie death and maximum townie confusion when he gets caught, and I admire that in a scumbag. I have to admit, I've pulled off the same thing in small/medium sized games as scum.
The approach works like this: Get all attention off your partners as much as possible, and make sure all town talks about is other townies. Put them on the defensive and just power wolf shamelessly. The aggression is mistaken for solving. You barely act like your townie self, as it's not necessary. It's always more obvious to you that what you're doing is scummy than it is to the average townie. Even if they call you out, you can generally blow them off. And of course, being so scummy, it's easy for your partner to bus you at the right moment because you have some meat behind the argument, making it not very clear who is bussing and who is solving. As long as you cause damage before you go, you don't have to worry.
The above describes Tom's entire game for two straight months.
He's not even a little bit townie, not even close, and you will never be more confident that anyone is scum than you will be by looking at Tom's iso.
I'm going to ask anyone who thinks Tom is actually town to please stop what you're doing, and give my analysis a look. Those of you who already caught Tom, such as Jey K, congrats.
Day 1 pocketing: Tom begins by giving town reads to EL and Kabazame, reads which he never really questions or reviews very much. He just attempts to pocket both players for the entire game. He also gives Study Latin an easy town read which he doesn't return to. Pockets Toastboy. Pockets Vaimes as soon as he sees him. Continues pocketing Kabazame even while Kabaz is getting votes, does not offer a meaningful defense of his town read. Note that Tom marks them down as townie for flimsy reasons right away, and then never returns to these reads. Right away, you know this isn't real town solving. Town solving is harder than early day 1 snap reads you never re-examine.
Day 1 scumming after townies: Tom throws shade on Shadowlancerx (calling him "manipulative") and then walks back that accusation over many posts. He attacks BluesEclipse. He trashes Rodemy and accuses him of being a hypocrite, accuses him of having double standards. Accuses Jey K of pocketing him and after that, harasses her for the entire game. Says that rodemy and jey k aren't partners, but gives them both a scum read. Then, he realizes this doesn't make any sense, and says that because rodemy is "voting people for silly out of context *****" why can't he do that to his buddies, which is badly forcing a conclusion. He's starting with the conclusion and then inventing reasons why it is true, and this invented reason is not even close to being plausible. Scums after grapefruit with manipulative questions and aggressive accusations. Continues throwing tons of shade on rodemy and grapefruit. He's passive-aggressive towards Killjoy and makes question-statements which are meant to play to the room. By end of day he's attacking Grapefruit, JeyK, Zionite, Killjoy, and rodemy.
Day 1 defending scumbags: He calls Tubba "meaningfully townie" immediately. Puts Anaklusmos as "pretty town" after 4 posts, never does serious analysis on either Tubba or Anak. Promotes Tubba as "noobtown" after KillJoy says it. Does not meaningfully discuss Lngrrr, puts this space as null.
He lynches Grapefruit and kills Rhand, who is possibly one of the best town solvers I've ever seen.
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Day 2 pocketing: Attempts to pocket shadowlancer after calling him manipulative the day before. EL calls Tom out for trying to buddy and pocket him, check out post 590 showing their exchange. EL totally calls out Tom and Lngrrr's behavior. 686 is basically his only reason to ever mark Shadowlancer down as town, and he rides on that all game instead of doing any actual work on that slot. All of his town reads are based on paper thin reasoning if any, and lazily never re-examined.
Day 2 scumming after townies: Immediately opens the round by going after Killjoy, Rodemy, and Jey K. Piles on Jey K when that proves to be a popular choice. Does not push KillJoy. Post 655 pressures Jey K to go after KillJoy. By post 735, Tom, Lngrrr, and Tubba are all attacking Jey K and rodemy. Anaklusmos will join this group in shading these people as well. Goes after Zionite in 802. JeyK, Zionite, and KillJoy are the three wagons by end of Day 2, pushed by Tubba and Tom and Lngrrr and Anaklusmos. Each of them had some combination of Jey, Zion, and Killjoy as at least 2 of their "suspects" that round. Nice teamwork on that. Killjoy is his top scum read this round and pushes Jey K instead of trying to persuade people on Killjoy, showing absolutely no sense of urgency. He moves to Killjoy with 20 minutes left to go and no argument made why Killjoy should go before JeyK. Then he moves back to JeyK, puts this person at L-1, and he and one of his "suspects" Lngrrr decide to lynch Zionite instead before he has a chance to log on and defend himself or claim, which means they get to try to lynch JeyK on day 3, while claiming that JeyK is the one they should have lynched the whole time. Posts 839-844 show Tom and Lngrrr working together to keep JeyK alive instead of pushing this person to death, so they can push this person day 3 instead.
Day 2 defending scumbags: Still has Lngrrr as null on Day 2. Eventually begins to call Lngrrr scummy, but always through connections to other people, who he always suggests lynching first, for example Jey K. Posts 586 and 587 are Tom and Lngrrr poorly distancing from one another. Compare their interactions with one another to any townie's cases and pushes on their actual suspects, and see if you can spot the difference. If you're any good at this game, it should leap right out at you. Post 611 he mentions Anak, but doesn't really do work on him. 627 he's talking to Tubba and mentions Anak, but there is no work being done on either slot. 640 avoids talking about Anak by simply saying he's town, doesn't say why. 676 mentions Anak but again doesn't do anything but generically call him townie because of his 13 posts so far, which read scummy to me. In 699 he lists five people he's willing to lynch, KillJoy, JeyK, Lngrrr, Rodemy, and Zionite. My wager is that 4 of them are town and Lngrrr is the scum, which means his list is worse than rand. He's naming a scum but hiding it inside five names, which is the opposite of being worth town credit. Killjoy's Iso looks amazing, he's never scum, Zionite was town, and Tubba's behavior toward JeyK and the vote analysis I did shows that slot is also townie, and rodemy looks strongly townie enough from his ISO that I'm willing to call that slot a solid town read. In post 800, when he names people he's willing to lynch, Lngrrr isn't on the list. 818 is some of the gentlest distancing I've ever seen in a game, between Tom and Lngrrr. In 821 he smears JeyK and Killjoy as being on a scum team with Lngrrr, which is, again, the only time he mentions that this slot is scummy, when he can use that to push on someone besides Lngrrr. As an aside, post 844 is some really bad acting by Lngrrr: "Holy schnikes it is 8 to lymch?!?!"
He lynches Zionite instead of pushing his "top scum suspect" JeyK, which is what he should have been doing if he was townie and actually believed JeyK was scum. Then he murders Vaimes.
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Day 3 pocketing: Still pocketing Latin in 941. In 1165 he's still pocketing shadow while also leaving himself space to pretend this read doesn't exist because he's shadow. Convenient. Still hasn't done any actual work on Shadow which confirms or denies that easy townread.
Day 3 scumming after townies: Tubba and Tom both open the day lusting after JeyK, because they obviously were saving the mislynch so they could get 3 mislynches in a row. KJ, JK, and rodemy all get pushed by Tubba, Tom, Anak, and Lngrrr on day 3, But here's the crown jewel:
874, Tom and Lngrrr both use these kinds of arguments against each other, smearing townies with false associations to one another. That's why it is a massively obvious tactic.893, I'm never going to not lynch both Tom and Lngrrr after this. They're sharing a strategy of getting a benefit from bussing one another, which is to smear a townie at the same time. Since they're both doing it around the same time, it is a deliberate scum strategy that they are both participating in. Tom does it multiple times in other posts as well. Look at his ISO.
You always lynch Tom and Lngrrr on Day 4 and Day 5 after these^ posts.^
In 1218 Tom is flailing badly because he needs that JeyK lynch so badly, while his vote is on Lngrrr. 1220 Tom really wants JeyK lynched, but his vote is elsewhere. He really, really wants to convince me that JeyK is scum.
Day 3 defending scumbags: 856 "Down to lynch any of" Killjoy, Jey, and Lngrrr, while always seriously pushing JeyK in his content. His vote may move, but his suspicions and arguments and biggest pushes are always designed to kill JeyK before Lngrrr regardless of his vote placement, which never stays on Lngrrr for very long. 874 implies that the best solution would be lynching Lngrrr. Watch his play that entire round and tell me it was really his top priority. 886 and 889 Tom and Lngrrr "bus" each other. Watch how long it takes for them to find something shinier to vote for. 903 proves his big theory about Lngrrr being scum by pushing on JeyK instead. His comment on Tubba in 941 is just stalling. Marks down Anak as suspect in 949, but he drops this immediately. In 950, Anak is back marked down as neutral, and in 962 Anak "Seems townie". That's 3 different positions on Anak in under 15 posts. He mentions Tubba many times but refuses to do any work on the slot. In 1007 he actually states outright that he thinks Anak and Killjoy are scum, but not together, and if Killjoy flips town, he doesn't want to "risk" the game on lynching Anak. That's scummy independent of Anak being scummy, but it sure looks like they're partnered. 1151 Tom actually makes an almost serious push on Lngrrr, watch how long it takes for him to wander away from that. In 1158 he's still forcing associative reads on Jey, and calls Tubba scum, but we have to lynch JeyK to prove that these other people are scum, not these other people. Watch. And in 1219 he says that he's "not really seeing Tubba as scum", because "Pizza is just seeing newplayer tells". Eat a lynch, Tom. 1221 he defends Anaklusmos again. 1231, Tom's past several posts have been "please don't lynch Tubba or Anaklusmos, please lynch JeyK while I leave my vote on Lngrrr for bussing credit". Tom's never a townie. He's also planning on "making his vote useful", which means his vote on Lngrrr is still purely for show. 1232 "Lngrrr still my preferred lynch by a wide margin" he says, while 90 percent of his arguments have been directed at JeyK. He never hammers Lngrrr or really pushes it, and no one else is voting there, so it's safe.
So it's clear what Tom's strategy is.
He's not really solving the game, as you can clearly see by his snap judgments of the folks he called town, and the people he's pushed as scum mainly being townies, while defending Tubba the scumbag. He's manipulating townies, pocketing townies, making bad associations before flips to smear folks like Jey K, saying people are scummy but is unwilling to push them hard and keep his vote there, or convince people that they are, if their names are Anak or Lngrrr. But he's willing to suggest several players are scum with them, he did that with Tubba (just before calling Tubba a townie, remind) and Lngrrr. He never did any work on EL, Kabazame, Toastboy, Shadowlancerx, Anak, or Tubba, but those reads never changed (except with Anak, they changed to mafia, neutral, and town in the span of a few posts.) He tried hard to save and protect Tubba all game.
Dude's the scummiest thing that has ever existed and must be set on fire and thrown in a wood chipper, followed shortly by Lngrrr who is also obviously scum. On the scum team, Anak is also doing terribly in my esteemed opinion. I'm always lynching him after those two die, because he's also pretty much lock scum. But Tom is bussing Lngrrr and Lngrrr is bussing Tom, and I think we should grant them both their wish, as it's very very very clear they are both scum together. Day 3 proved it beyond any doubt in my mind.
Tom scum flip also makes EL town and Jey K town and Killjoy as well, independent of their isos which make them town anyway. So lynch Tom first, and you'll be able to get 3 town reads off of it when he flips scum.
I forgot why I quit the first time though and honestly it's going to cascade through this game. I was right and nobody listened to me, and I'm not about to have it a third time. Maybe I'll be around as another co-mod though!
I listened and was your biggest fan. We would have decimated Tom the next day, no doubt.
I don't think it would be like that all of the time. I followed you just fine in Apocalypse, and reading this game it felt way different but you had your gimmick to hand-wave that excuse away. I definitely suspected your play but I'm terrible at this game. I'm right, and then I doubt myself and my ability to comprehend anything.
I really did want to vote Rodemy though, that's one of the things I was definitely wrong about.
I forgot why I quit the first time though and honestly it's going to cascade through this game. I was right and nobody listened to me, and I'm not about to have it a third time. Maybe I'll be around as another co-mod though!
To anyone: writing is a huge passion of mine and if you want some help with flavor for a game give me or Iso a ring (he's my roommate).
Actually, I DO have a completed (&reviewed) basic that needs flavor. I'm just scared to run it since its my first game as mod.
I might consider taking you up on this.
Go for it! Send me a PM here or better yet add me on discord, JeY k#3074 - second one might be better since I'll stop checking here in a matter of time
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Hi askthepizzaguy! Yeah it turns out I started getting on the right track about Tom and then... Stopped playing I guess. I didn't listen to my intuition about Tubba Fett, and I probably never would've truly suspected LnGrrrR. I was totally wrong about Rodemy, Kabazame x_x
I just can't play this game. I know that saying that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy but in my preferences, learning it is more trouble than it's worth.
I really think confidence is one of the keys to this game as either alignment. Before you give up, try a game and over exaggerate your confidence as either alignment Jey. Trust your self. If you die, you die. It's just a game.
I really think confidence is one of the keys to this game as either alignment. Before you give up, try a game and over exaggerate your confidence as either alignment Jey. Trust your self. If you die, you die. It's just a game.
This.
If you treat someone's scum read on you as if it's ridiculous, it's really hard for them to keep on you.
Tbh pizza, I'm surprised it took people so long to actually push me. I was pretty openly playing to my wincon
I know! I feel like... people were just used to your presence. It was downright shocking to read your iso.
It's kind of like... if you have a sore back for long enough, it just becomes part of your life. But if you have no sore back and then get one, it's much more obvious to you.
I think it has a lot to do with me subbing in. If I was there at start of game, I'd have died of the phases being too long, but apart from that, a totally different perspective on the game. Plus you'd have been playing against me, and not against Latin. That would change how you play maybe.
Also big shout out to rhand who is obviously the n1 kill because he's amazing, Killjoy and rodemy for being such glowingly townie townies, and jey k for somehow managing to put up with a month of pure trolling by the wolf team and being mislynch bait forever.
The folks who joined me on Tubba. And just all the townies in general who gave it a good try.
And gg wp to the scum team. Can't deny you guys fooled the people you needed to fool, and EL himself I never even bothered to read because it was townie at a glance and a lot of text. Good anti-analysis. I'd have been hard pressed to reverse that read. I'd have moved onto my next scummy and helped this slot win.
I'm shocked that EL was scum. My reads were bad overall but that one I think was just EL playing very well. At least I was right on my strongest town read (Anak). Hopefully after I play more games here and get used to the players and pacing I will have better reads
Well I'm off the read the scum chat, hopefully I wasn't made fun of too much :>
Oh yeah, I only read scumchat. Forgot about spec chat.
-reads-
How was I seriously the only person who caught EternalLurker at all?
I'm super upset I gave up on that read and didn't push JoeTerry (until the end when it was already too late at least) and just... stopped reading Tom, at all, or I would've been able to follow through and lynch him.
My head just wasn't in this game. Work crushed me.
I'm shocked that EL was scum. My reads were bad overall but that one I think was just EL playing very well. At least I was right on my strongest town read (Anak). Hopefully after I play more games here and get used to the players and pacing I will have better reads
Well I'm off the read the scum chat, hopefully I wasn't made fun of too much :>
We all have a list of behaviors in our head that we think scums don't do and townies do. If a scum does those things, they'll be read townie.
No matter what we do, how much experience we have, or how "good" we are, we are all vulnerable to a wolf that does things you think a wolf shouldn't do.
Unless you're doing a strategy of deliberately lynching your town reads, you will never catch 100 percent of the people who rand scum.
If someone's a town read, you're saying you don't want to lynch them. That fails your win condition if they're scum.
Nothing especially wrong with you, Kabaz. I had that same weakness here.
The original idea for the setup struck me pretty fully formed: a Game of Thrones-like parody, a mish-mash of pantomime villainy, fantasy clichés, and some theft from the Discworld. A bunch of roles were thrown together, with some backstory (which started off a lot more in depth and strange than made it into the final game). I made a conscious decision to make something more light-hearted than my previous games. Partially because I couldn't/didn't want to lean on Toastboy to write all the flavour, but also because my ultimate goal was a genuinely *fun* game of Mafia, which doesn't quite mesh with our traditional heavy explorations of moralistic shades-of-grey and pun-free desperate circumstances.
At the same time as I was having fun thinking of stupid characters, I made another conscious decision to build the game bottom-up, rather than top down. Apocalypse was built out of imagining the world and the characters that would inhabit it, and creating roles from those characters - then missing holes of balance were filled in. Cyberspace was constructed out of the overarching mechanics (which were themselves based on the flavour of the concept of cyberspace itself), and then populated with classic cyberpunk, neo-noir, and low-life hacker archetypes, and abilities grew from there. For Low Fantasy however, the roles were put together separately. The purpose of this was to have a low complexity, solidly balanced game that didn't go overboard with roles, where the flavour was just additional. In addition, I tried to reverse engineer the most enjoyable game of Mafia. For a 12/4 game, I believe it looks something like like:
D1 Mislynch (D1 scum lynch puts the scum a long way behind and/or the town can get complacent and lose motivation)
First scum lynch on D2/D3 (The first scum lynch is arguably the most important, as it gives the town significant information. If this happens too late, the town is too far behind and has too small a margin of error)
Another scum lynch before LyLo (Triple LyLo is incredibly hard for the town to win through)
The third scum lynch either the day before or in a 5-man (3v2) LyLo (Double LyLo is certainly manageable)
A final, climactic 3-man, 1v2, winner takes all Day 7 Lynch or Lose - These are the most tense ways for games to end, and produce a genuine, satisfying climax, in the way a clean sweep just doesn't.
Obviously, a mod has very limited control over the game unfolding in this way (although this one got close!). Bearing this in mind, let's look at the roles themselves:
1-shot Cop with drawback: As much as I dislike alignment cops, a single shot can provide a very powerful anchor for the town. It either confirms someone (usually quite good) as Town, or catches scum. The drawback of losing the shot when scum dies encourages early use to reduce the risk of breaking LyLo, as well as making it more likely to hit town - and if it does hit scum, it provides that invaluable first scum lynch. The loss of the shot on a scum lynch D1 also helps balance the fact that the scum are now behind. I considered a D1 scum lynch to be just as valuable to the town as a sane cop shot.
Daykill with restriction: Fundamentally, Daykilling is fun (big tick). It also adds a big event to the day, which is exciting. The one bonus kill also removes a No Lynch from the game (because no lynches are comparatively boring). The role also had additional flavour requirements: having to write a scene made the role even more of a dramatic event (since just Daykill: X is very bland), whereas the requirement for the role name means the Daykill probably won't get used too early or frivolously (Getting Daykilled on D1 is not very fun), whilst the potential suicide gave counter play to ballsy scum and meant that the No Lynch was always removed.
Inventor: Literally spread the power out. Arguably weak, since he can give abilities to scum, but creates a lot of player agency - in both who he gives abilities and how the recipient uses them. I do really wish it had lived, but I guess it's my fault for giving it to Rhand.
Doc: The most boring role, but acts as glue to holds things together. His presence requires scum to play around, and the doc is a solid threat to the scum until he is found. No real depths to plumb here.
The scum were given tools to counter the town, but in a less traditional form that usual. Most obviously, they were not given a roleblocker. This was a deliberate choice, based on the idea that being roleblocked is not fun, and the only ability the scum really had visibility to block would be the doc, or lucking into one of the other one-shot abilities. Plus, blocking the cop shot, however unlikely, would have been a big swing. Instead they got:
2x Redirector: This is the pseudo roleblocker: it allows them to keep the doc off their target, and gives them control over the Inventor. It's also much less devastating for the town's abilities to be redirected rather than blocked. It was limited to 2 shots because I wanted its usage to be deliberate and intentional, rather than just randomly redirecting people each Night. The redirect also pushed the Daykill into being a Day ability rather than a Nightkill: redirecting vig-shots is disgustingly strong.
Watcher: Arguably the most powerful role on the team, this was primarily there to find the Doc, as well as give the scum some insight into what the Inventor and their inventions were up to. It was also a strong claim to make, as Watcher is a very common Town role (but without being alignment-confirming)
Backup Rolecop: The inclusion of this was very borderline, and I think the scum would probably have been fine without it. However it acted as a failsafe so they got something if their information role died early. It was also more powerful in the late game as the pool of possible power-role players was narrowed down.
Daytalk: Voxx keeps saying it's more fun to be Mafia if you have Daytalk, because then you can hang out and small talk with your buddies instead of being stressed to fit it all in over Night. I agree, so I dropped it in there. (I don't necessarily agree it should become the norm, as MTGS is one of the few places where Nighttalk only is really feasible).
Overall and in retrospect, I think the town is marginally weaker than the scum, but the town does have access to more blowout potential (cop and vig shots, Doc save is pretty strong), and the Inventor makes more problems for the scum as the game goes on, while the scum have limited ability to just stop the blowouts cold due to no roleblock, forcing them to improvise and piece together the game state with the roles they have. 4+8v4 is also nice symmetry!
Looking at the game in totality, I would absolutely call it a success: I really enjoyed writing the flavour (although there was going to be more and a richer world, but Mafia as a game is so non-conducive to writing prose, and it gets really boring writing variants of "and then this person got killed" over and over again). I also think the characters were funny and entertaining, and I hope everyone enjoyed reading the role PMs! I also think the mechanical aspects of the game were simple, straightforward, and balanced enough while also being not entirely obvious and unoriginal.
So how did it play out? Well, D1 went according to the desired plan, in that D1 was a mislynch (although I feel bad for Grapefruit for replacing in and getting murdered). However, the Town suffered an absolutely disastrous N1. The inventor got killed, and the scum also saw the Doc! In addition, Kabazame used his cop shot sub-optimally on Toastboy basically as an OMGUS reaction. TB was fairly widely town read and playing positively, and there were much more valuable unknowns around: imagine how strong an investigation of JeY k would have been! Tragically, Toastboy was also the most confirmable town power role in the game, unfortunately rendering the investigation totally useless.
Day 2 rolls around, and things get even worse: another mislynch, and Night 2 sees the Doc (and strong player) Vaimes killed, while Shadow wastes his gifted Track shot testing Kabazame. At this point, the town are well and truly in the hole: 2 mislynches, 2 NKs, and with a daykill the only power left in their pocket.
Then, of course, ATPG makes his grand entrance. He wakes up the listless town, the they get their first scum lynch. ATPG is unsurprisingly immediately killed, but the town manage to get LnGrrrR the next day. The scum expend their newly acquired rolecop shot that Night, and at this point the usefulness of their power is all gone. Game on.
Day 5 is key - the town have one mislynch spare, and need to find 2 scum. Toastboy steps up and blows Anak away, removing a mislynch from the pool. Tragically, the Day ends far too soon with KJ's lynch.
So far, the game has excellently followed the layout: the first scum lynch came a bit late, but we are now going into a 3v2 LyLo. Ideally, the town would lynch correctly and bring it to a tense 3-player LyLo, but as we all know that sadly didn't happen. So what happened?
Overall, the town did a really good job getting back into the game after all their power got killed - they were so far behind on N2 that I basically wrote them off. However, that come back really has to be attributed to ATPG taking the game by the scruff of its neck, churning out a significant amount of analysis and motivating the town into consecutive scum lynches. I think Toastboy also played his role well, holding the kill much longer than most people would and removing Anak from the trees scum could hide behind (especially because there was a point I was very worried he would gamble and shoot Kabazame, which would have been a disaster!).
The key problem was that in the majority of the game that didn't contain ATPG, the town were rudderless and listless, with no real leader or (not-scum) people really driving the game. Although overall activity was fine (I didn't have to send very many prods at all), content was quite low - particularly in the first half of Days we would see very few posts. The scum were by far the more active faction (EternalLurker and Tom in particular, but they discuss the situation in scum chat that they were often the only ones posting and conversing). This lack of direction meant lynches were really sloppy: almost all were rushed at the deadline, and there were almost no pre-deadline wagons to analyse, and basically no claims at all - because no-one hit L-2 without getting lynched immediately because the deadline was so close and they weren't online. I was really hoping ATPG's injection of brute-force activity and successful lynches would galvanise the town, but it...just didn't.
There was also an absolutely chronic lack of reading back and reassing and trying to objectively find scum: EL was given a game-long free pass for being confrontational and abrasive, despite the fact that this was very clearly just a personality trait, rather than alignment indicative. SJT did fine to not rock that boat, but (with 20/20 mod vision) made a number of posts that were textbook waffly and buzzword filled that someone really should have thought about. Similarly, Tom was basically openly power wolfing from the moment he accidentally revealed his gimmick, but no-one really sat down and tried to read him, just hoping he would resolve himself at some point. I think the epitome of this was Shadow's votecount analysis in #1881: if he'd actually set it up without colouring the unknowns, he'd have seen EL and Pa in the middle of the grapefruit wagon, while Tubba and LnGrrrR are off-wagon. Instead, he coloured in EL/SJT as Town and allowed himself to be tunnel visioned into making the losing vote.
I think that there a lot of lessons to be learned from the game, even if these lessons are really ones which seem to come up a lot. Townies win the game by staying engaged, actively scumhunting, and frequently re-analsysing their view of the gamestate. That didn't happen enough, which let unnecessary townies die, and let scum skate by on D1 reads. Even in the face of that, it was a good game and both teams played solidly: the scum team just played better and were willing to put more in.
Thanks everyone for playing, and I'm glad everyone seems to have enjoyed themselves since, well, that was the point!
I was so upset that everyone wrote off EL as town that whole game v_v" and that I didn't follow through on my Tom analysis because it was starting to get really good.
Thanks for hosting Ecophagy, I'm glad you got a lot out of it as well!
Oh cmon now... you convinced me that Lurker was scum!
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
Felt pretty good about staying in the middle all game. Being just townie enough to avoid too much heat and pushing a bunch of town.
Really thought outing my identity would lead to my lynch tbh.
Didn't expect the quick thunder dome in lylo. Wasn't sure we could recover from that. Great job with that claim, joeterry
Tubba I think you played great. Can't wait to see you be town.
Lngrrr: sorry. But it worked out in the end.
@rodemy lord was I trying hard to lynch you there. Idk if I would have made it (gut says jey was gonna vote you but idk) but that was as much as I could put into it and it was brutal
@shadow I really wanted to kill you but there was never a good time. New you weren't gonna be on my side.
@pizza
I think scum have won every game we've been in together. Regardless of our alignments. We should maybe work on that.
I really did want to vote Rodemy though, that's one of the things I was definitely wrong about.
I forgot why I quit the first time though and honestly it's going to cascade through this game. I was right and nobody listened to me, and I'm not about to have it a third time. Maybe I'll be around as another co-mod though!
To anyone: writing is a huge passion of mine and if you want some help with flavor for a game give me or Iso a ring (he's my roommate).
¤.†.¤ The OceanLink ¤.†.¤
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
I might consider taking you up on this.
Thanks for the kind words. If/when I run another game I'll hit you up. I don't have anything in the pipeline at the moment, apart from some half-baked Specialty ideas that are pretty far out there.
Do it. Do it now! Running games isn't that scary, and the vote counter means you don't even need a giant spreadsheet any more. More importantly, we need more games!
+++++++++
@All: Thoughts on the setup and it's creation, along with the play of the game itself to come tomorrow.
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
Expect a final draft sent to you soon
Yeah, we got super lucky with that one.
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
Scum chat: "shadow is unlynchable"
Spec chat: "shadow is scum"
Was fun to come in stir crap up and almost immediately die.
Sorry to the town for not being able to play any better, I don't really know what happened but at some point I just lost track of everything and couldn't really put it back together.
PA tennis' backstory was he was an awesome mafia player back in college and had to quit when he got a real job. Probably something in the financial sector because hes that sort of dude. Someone told him about this site that has 2 week phases and he gave it a shot. He's a bit meaner than me, which was exacerbated by being scum.
He was gonna play 2-3 games and fade away like Not_A_Gimmick.
Playstyle would have been fun as town.
Official beverage of Pa Tennis was orange exuberance yerba mate. He also smoked menthols.
I was going to open the next day with this, which, by the way, was the extremely condensed version. I had a much much much longer one spanning six posts, because it cannot fit in one post.
next
I listened and was your biggest fan. We would have decimated Tom the next day, no doubt.
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
Go for it! Send me a PM here or better yet add me on discord, JeY k#3074 - second one might be better since I'll stop checking here in a matter of time
---
Hi askthepizzaguy! Yeah it turns out I started getting on the right track about Tom and then... Stopped playing I guess. I didn't listen to my intuition about Tubba Fett, and I probably never would've truly suspected LnGrrrR. I was totally wrong about Rodemy, Kabazame x_x
I just can't play this game. I know that saying that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy but in my preferences, learning it is more trouble than it's worth.
¤.†.¤ The OceanLink ¤.†.¤
That's infuriating
¤.†.¤ The OceanLink ¤.†.¤
If you treat someone's scum read on you as if it's ridiculous, it's really hard for them to keep on you.
And I guess the vig was really neat too!
Yeah he got super aggressive page 1. I shouldn't have backed off
I know! I feel like... people were just used to your presence. It was downright shocking to read your iso.
It's kind of like... if you have a sore back for long enough, it just becomes part of your life. But if you have no sore back and then get one, it's much more obvious to you.
I think it has a lot to do with me subbing in. If I was there at start of game, I'd have died of the phases being too long, but apart from that, a totally different perspective on the game. Plus you'd have been playing against me, and not against Latin. That would change how you play maybe.
You should be proud of being that wolfy and never dying, that's... astounding. A real feather in your cap.
Fun to play with.
The folks who joined me on Tubba. And just all the townies in general who gave it a good try.
And gg wp to the scum team. Can't deny you guys fooled the people you needed to fool, and EL himself I never even bothered to read because it was townie at a glance and a lot of text. Good anti-analysis. I'd have been hard pressed to reverse that read. I'd have moved onto my next scummy and helped this slot win.
Glad I died to be spared that fate.
I need to read better :<
I'm shocked that EL was scum. My reads were bad overall but that one I think was just EL playing very well. At least I was right on my strongest town read (Anak). Hopefully after I play more games here and get used to the players and pacing I will have better reads
Well I'm off the read the scum chat, hopefully I wasn't made fun of too much :>
-reads-
How was I seriously the only person who caught EternalLurker at all?
I'm super upset I gave up on that read and didn't push JoeTerry (until the end when it was already too late at least) and just... stopped reading Tom, at all, or I would've been able to follow through and lynch him.
My head just wasn't in this game. Work crushed me.
¤.†.¤ The OceanLink ¤.†.¤
We all have a list of behaviors in our head that we think scums don't do and townies do. If a scum does those things, they'll be read townie.
No matter what we do, how much experience we have, or how "good" we are, we are all vulnerable to a wolf that does things you think a wolf shouldn't do.
Unless you're doing a strategy of deliberately lynching your town reads, you will never catch 100 percent of the people who rand scum.
If someone's a town read, you're saying you don't want to lynch them. That fails your win condition if they're scum.
Nothing especially wrong with you, Kabaz. I had that same weakness here.
At the same time as I was having fun thinking of stupid characters, I made another conscious decision to build the game bottom-up, rather than top down. Apocalypse was built out of imagining the world and the characters that would inhabit it, and creating roles from those characters - then missing holes of balance were filled in. Cyberspace was constructed out of the overarching mechanics (which were themselves based on the flavour of the concept of cyberspace itself), and then populated with classic cyberpunk, neo-noir, and low-life hacker archetypes, and abilities grew from there. For Low Fantasy however, the roles were put together separately. The purpose of this was to have a low complexity, solidly balanced game that didn't go overboard with roles, where the flavour was just additional. In addition, I tried to reverse engineer the most enjoyable game of Mafia. For a 12/4 game, I believe it looks something like like:
Obviously, a mod has very limited control over the game unfolding in this way (although this one got close!). Bearing this in mind, let's look at the roles themselves:
The scum were given tools to counter the town, but in a less traditional form that usual. Most obviously, they were not given a roleblocker. This was a deliberate choice, based on the idea that being roleblocked is not fun, and the only ability the scum really had visibility to block would be the doc, or lucking into one of the other one-shot abilities. Plus, blocking the cop shot, however unlikely, would have been a big swing. Instead they got:
Overall and in retrospect, I think the town is marginally weaker than the scum, but the town does have access to more blowout potential (cop and vig shots, Doc save is pretty strong), and the Inventor makes more problems for the scum as the game goes on, while the scum have limited ability to just stop the blowouts cold due to no roleblock, forcing them to improvise and piece together the game state with the roles they have. 4+8v4 is also nice symmetry!
Looking at the game in totality, I would absolutely call it a success: I really enjoyed writing the flavour (although there was going to be more and a richer world, but Mafia as a game is so non-conducive to writing prose, and it gets really boring writing variants of "and then this person got killed" over and over again). I also think the characters were funny and entertaining, and I hope everyone enjoyed reading the role PMs! I also think the mechanical aspects of the game were simple, straightforward, and balanced enough while also being not entirely obvious and unoriginal.
Day 2 rolls around, and things get even worse: another mislynch, and Night 2 sees the Doc (and strong player) Vaimes killed, while Shadow wastes his gifted Track shot testing Kabazame. At this point, the town are well and truly in the hole: 2 mislynches, 2 NKs, and with a daykill the only power left in their pocket.
Then, of course, ATPG makes his grand entrance. He wakes up the listless town, the they get their first scum lynch. ATPG is unsurprisingly immediately killed, but the town manage to get LnGrrrR the next day. The scum expend their newly acquired rolecop shot that Night, and at this point the usefulness of their power is all gone. Game on.
Day 5 is key - the town have one mislynch spare, and need to find 2 scum. Toastboy steps up and blows Anak away, removing a mislynch from the pool. Tragically, the Day ends far too soon with KJ's lynch.
So far, the game has excellently followed the layout: the first scum lynch came a bit late, but we are now going into a 3v2 LyLo. Ideally, the town would lynch correctly and bring it to a tense 3-player LyLo, but as we all know that sadly didn't happen. So what happened?
Overall, the town did a really good job getting back into the game after all their power got killed - they were so far behind on N2 that I basically wrote them off. However, that come back really has to be attributed to ATPG taking the game by the scruff of its neck, churning out a significant amount of analysis and motivating the town into consecutive scum lynches. I think Toastboy also played his role well, holding the kill much longer than most people would and removing Anak from the trees scum could hide behind (especially because there was a point I was very worried he would gamble and shoot Kabazame, which would have been a disaster!).
The key problem was that in the majority of the game that didn't contain ATPG, the town were rudderless and listless, with no real leader or (not-scum) people really driving the game. Although overall activity was fine (I didn't have to send very many prods at all), content was quite low - particularly in the first half of Days we would see very few posts. The scum were by far the more active faction (EternalLurker and Tom in particular, but they discuss the situation in scum chat that they were often the only ones posting and conversing). This lack of direction meant lynches were really sloppy: almost all were rushed at the deadline, and there were almost no pre-deadline wagons to analyse, and basically no claims at all - because no-one hit L-2 without getting lynched immediately because the deadline was so close and they weren't online. I was really hoping ATPG's injection of brute-force activity and successful lynches would galvanise the town, but it...just didn't.
There was also an absolutely chronic lack of reading back and reassing and trying to objectively find scum: EL was given a game-long free pass for being confrontational and abrasive, despite the fact that this was very clearly just a personality trait, rather than alignment indicative. SJT did fine to not rock that boat, but (with 20/20 mod vision) made a number of posts that were textbook waffly and buzzword filled that someone really should have thought about. Similarly, Tom was basically openly power wolfing from the moment he accidentally revealed his gimmick, but no-one really sat down and tried to read him, just hoping he would resolve himself at some point. I think the epitome of this was Shadow's votecount analysis in #1881: if he'd actually set it up without colouring the unknowns, he'd have seen EL and Pa in the middle of the grapefruit wagon, while Tubba and LnGrrrR are off-wagon. Instead, he coloured in EL/SJT as Town and allowed himself to be tunnel visioned into making the losing vote.
I think that there a lot of lessons to be learned from the game, even if these lessons are really ones which seem to come up a lot. Townies win the game by staying engaged, actively scumhunting, and frequently re-analsysing their view of the gamestate. That didn't happen enough, which let unnecessary townies die, and let scum skate by on D1 reads. Even in the face of that, it was a good game and both teams played solidly: the scum team just played better and were willing to put more in.
Thanks everyone for playing, and I'm glad everyone seems to have enjoyed themselves since, well, that was the point!
Thanks for hosting Ecophagy, I'm glad you got a lot out of it as well!
¤.†.¤ The OceanLink ¤.†.¤
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!